Leigh Kimmel says:

It’s a long way from the bright lights of the big cities on the East Coast. Even San Francisco is a long way south of here, although we sometimes see airships with the logos of various companies out of there. But these days we like it that way.

We came out here, Rafe and I, in the wake of the European War. We’d been so young and foolish back then, taking all our savings and heading off to Paris with notions of Seeing The World before we settled down to workaday life.

We’d seen it, all right, as one young fool set off a political catastrophe. We were just getting concerned about the heated words flying back and forth between the various European capitals, wondering whether we’d be wiser to just cut our Grand Tour short and catch the first ship back to an American port, even if it was a three-master with a one-eyed drunk for a captain — and news went out of the mobilization.

Suddenly everything that could move was being sent up north to reinforce the border with the German Empire — too little, too late. Von Kluck’s army smashed through from the north even as the airships — some with bombs, others full of paratroopers — soared over Paris. We were hidden in our host’s wine cellar during the bombardment, but afterward, as a chivalrous German officer of Bavarian origin was arranging passage home for us as neutrals, we saw the wreckage of the Eiffel Tower, which had gone from eyesore to symbol of Paris in a single generation. Herr Kapitan Weber even had the grace to show a bit of regret at the necessity of destroying it, since the French Army had been using it to send radio messages to their field commanders.

Lady Liberty never looked so beautiful as on that day when we sailed into New York Harbor, aboard a German merchanter filled with neutrals from the New World being returned to their homes. Yet New York City no longer held any charm for us, and we really weren’t all that excited about Boston or Philly either.

Rafe’s grandfather had acquired this little bit of land, out here in the coastal mountains among the Douglas firs and the giant redwoods. What he’d originally planned to do with it, we had no idea, but he was of an age that the vigorous life no longer had so much appeal, so he gladly let us move out here and build a cabin, do a little farming and write our memoirs of our encounter with European politics. Maybe it’ll be a warning for another young couple with more dollars than sense, who’s thinking about heading over there to see the sights of a continent where a five-hundred-year-old building can be called “new” with a straight face, but every city and every country is cheek by jowl.